The Holy Land Leading in Science

When you think of Israel you think of ancient biblical locations and stories from the Bible, right? I’m betting none of you think of Mars. Did you know that Israel is one of the only places on earth that’s geologically similar to Mars? Holly McClure, from LoveWorld USA’s News Update, sheds light on Israel’s science and technology innovations.

“The D Mars project is a Mars analog research project that is designed to simulate certain research project that potentially will be done on Mars” (Guy Ron, Prof. of nuclear physics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

Ron showed the habitat where six analog astronauts will spend a few days in simulated Mars conditions. The reasoning behind the site location is that Israel’s dessert looks a lot like Mars. In fact, Guy Ron explains, Israel is one of the only places on earth where you have the geology that is fairly similar to what we know exists on Mars.

The Israeli Ministry of Science is collaborating with the country’s Space Agency on the project which it hopes will boost the country’s international clout in the field of man-space exploration.

“For the last few months, we’ve been working hard at constructing the habitats that you see here that are designed to keep us in isolation. At the same time, we’ve been developing procedures to communicate with the control center, the simulated control center that will be located at the Weitzman Institute in Rehovot. And, developing the scientific experiments that we’ll be running during those four days” (Guy Ron).

The project will be running several experiments in the realms of geobiology, psychology, physics, and 3-D printing. All designed, to see whether the procedures that they’re developing will be useful for real-life astronauts going to Mars.

The Director-General of Israel’s Space Agency, Avi Blasberger, says Israel wants to play a role in developing mankind’s ability to travel deeper into space.

“Human Space exploration is a very interesting part of Space technology… Israel is currently joining NASA” (Avi Blasberger).

The four-day mission is the first stage in the D Mars project. Other longer missions are planned in the near future.